All Fukudap

Normally I try to avoid political postings on this site, but...

Well, Yasuo Fukuda has gone and shown the world that he is just one of a long line of Japanese prime ministers that lack anything resembling a backbone.  When he was first chosen prime minister there were a lot of alarms ringing on account of his background as well as the track record of his father, who held cabinet positions before and during World War II and was prime minister from 1976 to 1978.  However, Yasuo turned out to be a typically weak prime minister who accomplished very little during his almost-one-year in office.

Yasuo Fukuda made Japan's Asian neighbors happy by not visiting Yasukuni Shrine (see the shrine's own English-language website here), a controversial (and technically illegal) religious/nationalist activity practiced by many if not most of his predecessors.  He also made the U.S. happy by opting to override the complaints of the opposition and continue sending Japanese Marine Self-Defense Force ships to help refuel and resupply coalition naval vessels involved in the War on Terror^TM.   However, on the home front he will probably be best remembered for his vehement insistence on reinstating an expired supplementary gasoline tax the opposition parties hoped to get rid of to help stimulate the still-sagging economy.  The prime minister's argument in support of the tax was only that local governments had already figured it into their yearly budgets, which does make sense until you realize that an awfully large percentage of that money tends to be earmarked for pork projects.  By ignoring the opposition and the general public and fighting to keep the extra tax, the prime minister implied that he puts more value on bureaucrats, corporations, and the status quo then on the people.  Small wonder, then, that his approval rating never managed to get higher than 30%.

Fukuda says that it was his own decision to leave.  Frustrated with his persistently low approval rating and increasingly heated battles with the opposition, he reportedly said, "Get someone else."  The problem is who that "someone else" is liable to be.  The most likely candidate for the next prime minister right now is Taro Aso, and that would definitely be cause to worry.  Aso was the Foreign Minister under Prime Minister Koizumi, and during that time he had a bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth, particularly with regard to foreign policy.  He has always been very conservative and even rightist in his views (despite being a baptized Catholic) and takes an aggressively hardline stance with Japan's Asian neighbors.  Moreover, some of the things he has said on the record seem reckless if not downright daft, for example:

In 2005 he praised Japan for having "one nation, one civilization, one language, and one race," and claimed it was the only such country in the world.   (Simple nationalism or an argument for eugenics?)

Later that same year, talking about Japan's Middle East policy, he said, "The Japanese were trusted because they had never been involved in exploitation there, or been involved in fights or fired machine guns. Japan is doing what the Americans can't do. It would probably be no good to have blue eyes and blond hair. Luckily, we Japanese have yellow faces."  (Racism can be such a funny thing...)

In 2006 he called for the Emperor to visit Yasukuni Shrine, which hasn't happened since the war.  (Simple nationalism, or a veiled implication that it's time to scrap Japan's American-made, post-war constitution?)

Later that same year he claimed that the Japanese colonization of Taiwan and imposition of compulsory Japanese education there had been "a good thing".  (Yes, never mind the discrimination, the atrocities, the attempt to exterminate one culture and replace it with another...everything else was good!) 

Later that same year he referred to Taiwan as a "law-abiding country," contradicting official Japanese policy and infuriating China.  On earlier occasions he had directly described China as a "threat" and even implied that China was gearing up for war.  (Yeah, screw official policy.  Let's give our giant neighbor a nice kick in the butt and hope he'll run away whimpering!)

Are we sure we want this guy at the helm of Japan's government?  Fukuda, is it even remotely possible for you to grow some family jewels instead?